When to Break the Rules of Writing and When Not to

There was a young student in one of my composition classes who
insisted he didn’t need to cite and document sources.

He wasa very intelligent
young man who offered insightful comments during class discussions, yet, due to
a combination of what seemed to be immaturity, arrogance, and rigidity, he
was unwilling to learn what I tried to teach him.

Sometimes writers, like my student, get themselves into
traps they can’t get out of.Part of the
reason is because they hear the advice given by me and other writing teachers that it’s okay to break the rulesof writing.

They assume we're giving them permission to break any rule at any time.

But breaking rules is risky, and breaking them
successfully means knowing two things: 1) your audience and purpose, and 2) why a given rule exists in the first place.

Know Your Audience and Purpose

A good example of knowing your audience and purpose can be
found in the movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. This story belongs to epic fantasy, a genre which usually requires a lot of characters, different locations, and a lengthy time span. Audiences of epic fantasy expect these elements to be present.

But sometimes writers have to break certain rules to include them.

An Unexpected Journey, for example, is
told through the eyes of Bilbo Baggins, as he recounts past events in a book to his nephew, Frodo.However, his narrative includes several scenes in which Bilbo himself was not present. He, therefore, cannot know precisely what happened or who said what.

(Other characters may have
filled Bilbo in later on, though this seems unlikely or impossible in certain
cases.)

These scenes break the rules of point of view (or, rather, they adopt an episodically limited point of view).However, they work in the context of the
story by allowing the reader to learn a lot of information in Bilbo's absence.

The writers get around this point-of-view shift by focusing
on previously introduced characters such as Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield (and even the albino
orc), whom we already care about or have strong feelings toward. As a result, the viewer never feels
disconnected from Bilbo’s story.

(And no, I have not read the original book, though I started to once and never finished it. I don't know if Tolkein used the same device. But my point is the same: breaking rules is a good thing to do if it results in some easy-to-identify benefit to the story or audience.)

Know Why Writing
Rules Exist

Rules for writing were not invented just to make life
complicated for writers. They exist for one simple reason: to facilitate
communication between the writer and her audience. Communication becomes easier
when writer and reader agree upon a set of rules.

If you and I agree that a red light means stop and a green light means go, we solve a lot of miscommunication problems (and avoid potential accidents).

four unuther xampel, eff i spill thes zentenz thes uay, u prolly haev
Difikultie reedeen et.So, if you want
to get creative in your spelling, do so at the risk of alienating the reader.

Likewise, understand and respect the conventions of the
genre in which you are writing. If the convention calls for in-text citations
and a works cited page, use in-text
citations and a works cited page.

The Lord of the Rings
movies, for all their freewheeling action and imaginative settings and characters, adhere to the conventions of fantasy.Wizards do certain things. Dwarves do certain things. Hobbits do other
things. If Bilbo Baggins suddenly starts speaking magical spells and dwarves
hide in plain sight, we have a problem.

. . . But Don’t Follow
Rules Rigidly

Knowing when to follow rules and when to break them is a
judgment call that involves risk. Before you break a rule, write down answers
to the following questions: 1) What rule am I breaking, 2) what is the benefit (to story as well as audience) in breaking this
rule, and 3) what are the possible consequences of breaking this rule?

Oh the scourge of students who think they know best. I'm interested to know you're student's reasoning as to why plagiarism is okay as long as he's doing it. Rules are certainly okay to break every now and again (particularly in dialogue) but it should be the exception rather than the rule.

What he basically did in his research paper was summarize the findings of a single research project. So he did acknowledge the source, but he offered no synthesis of it and other sources and drew no original conclusions from it.

Greg Gildersleeve published his first novel, THE POWER CLUB in 2013, and a prequel, FALSE ALARM: A POWER CLUB NOVELLA, in 2015. He teaches writing in the Kansas City area.
The name of this site comes from an old-time radio program, "The Great Gildersleeve." That, however, wasn't the actor's real name. It is Greg's. (So there!)